Siedentop and Locke (1997) argue that the educational mission of university and state level educational personnel is to provide continuing professional development (CPD) as a service to the profession in order to promote appropriate and effective educational practice. High quality CPD should not only be the right of an educator it should be an obligation to the profession. Armour, Makopoulou, and Chambers (2008) boldly propose, “unless physical education teachers undertake challenging and effective professional learning throughout their long careers, they are unfit to be trusted with responsibility for children and young people in education, physical education, wellness, health, or anything else” (p.213). An extensive journal search found zero articles related specifically to the CPD needs of graduates from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU). At a time when there is, “considerable debate about the quality of graduates that HBCUs produce” it is necessary to find out in which areas beginning teachers from HBCUs perceive that they need more education to prepare them for teaching K-12 PE (DiGiacinto, 2014, p. 183). The purpose of this study is to identify areas in which recent PETE graduates feel they need more training in undergraduate program to properly teach concepts in the field of physical education.
Method:
A survey was distributed to physical education teaching graduates of HBCUs, who were in their first 5 years of licensure in the field of physical education. Participants were licensed teachers, licensed substitute teachers, and licensed students pursuing graduate education.
Analysis/Results:
This study found that inclusion strategies, practical daily technology use, sport specific training, and coping with multi-cultural or cross-cultural communication and perceptions were areas where graduates needed additional training. Coping with combating preconceived assumptions about them, as professionals, was an issue for many of the participants.
Conclusions:
This study has identified areas that should be addressed when providing CPD opportunities through HBCUs to licensed educators. This study also identifies areas where undergraduate HBCU programs can strengthen their courses of study, so that their graduates are better prepared to handle certain content areas or topics to lessen the immediate need for CPD to perform daily teaching functions. Through programming improvements HBCUs can strengthen the quality of their graduates and improve public perception.